Call for Topic Area Proposals
2013 Neuromorphic Cognition Engineering Workshop
Telluride, Colorado, June 30 -July 20, 2013
We are now accepting proposals for Topic Areas in the 2013 Telluride Neuromorphic Cognition
Engineering Workshop. We support topics and projects in neuromorphic cognition, particularly
those that involve solving challenging ‘everyday’ tasks that incorporate domain-specific
knowledge, exploration, prediction, and problem solving. In particular, we are interested in
projects that hold promise for addressing Grand Challenge types of problems that do not have
strong solutions of any form, neuromorphic or not. These Challenge problems should feature
long-duration sensorimotor problems that involve autonomous cognitive decision making.
Examples might include tasks such as learning a new language, navigating through an unknown
environment to locate an object or reach a desired location, adaptively manipulating unknown
or complex objects in the service of a task, playing a game requiring inference of hidden
information or long-term planning and learning, etc. Proposals related to hardware technologies
that aim to bring these capabilities to reality are also encouraged. Topic proposals that aim to
solve a particular problem using the multidisciplinary experience of participants will be favored
over topics that simply gather a large number of people working within a discipline, or using a
single technology, or approach.
Topic areas for this summer's Telluride Neuromorphic Cognition Engineering Workshop will be
chosen from proposals submitted to the organizers.
Important: Due to the nature of our NSF grant (primary funding source), two topic areas are
already established: “Interpreting actions of manipulation” and “Human-robot cooperation in
the identification of speakers and exploration of space”. We will also have a “Future hardware
technologies” tutorial/projects group.
Topic areas can span a large field; we are looking for leadership in planning activities
and inviting good people in a field. Although past topic areas have tended to be very broad
and discipline-oriented (e.g., cognition, audition, vision, robotics, neural interfacing,
neuromorphic VLSI, etc.), application-oriented topic areas (e.g., sensor fusion, game-playing
robot, object recognition, sound localization, human robot interaction, etc.) are especially
desirable.
Topic area leaders will receive housing for themselves and their invitees, and limited
travel funds. Topic area leaders will help to define the field of neuromorphic cognition
engineering through the projects they pursue and the people they invite. They shape their
topic by inviting speakers and project leaders (the invitees) and by initiating topic area project
discussions prior to the workshop.
Teams of two organizers are required. One of the organizers should be an attendee of a
previous Telluride Workshop (in any capacity) and has stayed at the Workshop for at least one
week.
Pre-workshop topic area choices and study assignments.
Before the workshop begins, each topic area will be required to prepare and distribute study
materials that constitute: 1) an introductory presentation (e.g., pptx, video, review paper) of
the fundamental knowledge associated with the topic area that everyone at the workshop
should be exposed to, and 2) a few critical papers that the participants in the topic area should
read before the workshop. The topic area should 3) begin a serious group discussion of the
projects (e.g., via Facebook, Skype, email, etc).
The maximum 2-page proposals should include:
1. Title of topic area.
2. Names of the two topic leaders, their affiliations, and contact information (email
addresses!).
3. A paragraph explaining the focus and goals of the topic area.
4. A list of possible specific topic area projects.
5. A list of example invitees (up to six names and institutions). No commitments necessary.
6. Any other material that fits within the two-page limit that will help us make a smart
choice.
Send your topic area proposal in pdf or text format to organizers13@neuromorphs.net with
subject line containing "topic area proposal".
Proposals must be received by January 7, 2013; proposals received after the deadline may
still be considered if space is available.
Resources limit the workshop to roughly 2 additional topic areas, each with 5 invitees.
If your proposal for the topic area is not accepted, we will work with you to see if there is a
natural way to include your ideas (and you) into the accepted topic areas. We hope to have
significant turn-over each year in the topic areas and leaders to ensure fresh new ideas and
participants.
See the Institute of Neuromorphic Engineering (www.ine-web.org) for background information
on the workshop and neuromorphs.net for past workshop wikis.
We look forward to your topic proposals!
Deadline: January 7, 2013
The Workshop Directors:
Cornelia Fermüller (University of Maryland), Ralph Etienne-Cummings (Johns Hopkins Univ.)
Shih-Chii Liu (University of Zurich and ETH Zurich), Timmer Horiuchi (University of Maryland)
Former Directors:
Tobi Delbruck (University of Zurich and ETH Zurich)

If you want to design robots able to interact to the real world in a useful way, you will eventually bump into the problem of implementing robust object recognition... This post describes work done the Neuromorphics Lab, using the Cog Ex Machina software platform to recognize objects in an iRobot Create platform.

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